


Stone

by gaydaydreamer



Category: Witches of East End (TV)
Genre: Other, SINnamon roll, my sweet baby, she doesn't deserve this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4608912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaydaydreamer/pseuds/gaydaydreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ingrid probably has a lot of feelings and they were never addressed in the show for some reason. A short take on how she might try to process everything that happened/is happening to her. Also shouldn't it be a bigger deal that she seems to walk a very fine line between hesitancy and recklessness? The warning is for brief mention of mandragora things...just to be safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone

**Author's Note:**

> for Ann  
> It's 4am and it was a story that needed to be told.  
> Takes place around "When a Mandragora Loves a Woman". Anyone else cringe at that ep title?

_// Stone //_

 

She is timid this time.

She knows it is not supposed to be a criticism, but Aunt Wendy's words sting nonetheless. There is truth in them, and that is why it hurts. A quiet, shy librarian, too unsure of herself to even finish her dissertation. The words bury themselves in her head and squirm there, burrowing into her thoughts far too often. The most powerful Beauchamp maybe, but also the most skeptical. Also the most hesitant. It makes Ingrid angry in a way that is hard to justify. Maybe Wendy said the same thing to a timid girl a hundred years ago. Maybe words are all it takes to turn a hesitant witch into a destructive one. She should be grateful that this time she is so cautious, since there seems to be no middle ground for any of her incarnations. Her powers either fester or flourish, the former an annoying reality. The latter is a scenario that has played out over a dozen times in as many lives. People always get hurt. Sometimes people she loves. Sometimes herself.

Magic still makes her hands tremble. Wendy once said she was their rock, but she feels more like a leaf. They all lean on her, but what about when she feels like falling?

Every night she falls the same. Into his arms, over a bannister, through darkness eternal. When the nightmare ends she is lying on her back and for a moment she sees a balcony rushing away from her, her horrified aunt clinging to the railing. By the time she sits up, all she can see is darkness. But her heart is still racing, back tingling from the memory of an impact that killed her. After that she can't sleep, so she sits in the kitchen, slumped over the table with a blanket around her shoulders and mug of tea in hand. The only source of light is the orange glow of a single candle. She can light it easily now but she practices anyway. There is comfort in repetition, solace in control.

_on._

She doesn't want to be scared of her gifts.

_off._

She doesn't want to lose herself in them.

_on._

She wants to learn all there is to know about herself.

_off._

She wishes she didn't even know this much.

_on._

It's as if she knows magic will corrupt her again, as it did once, lifetimes ago. She waves her hand, and the room goes dark. In the blackness she can almost feel the ghosts of her past selves brushing up against her. Their joy is hers, but also their pain. If she could choose, would she pick another Ingrid? Would she trust herself to still be a rock, and not the waves that beat against it?

Whenever she relives her past incarnation, she is jarred by how bold her former self was, how reckless. She pulls her fingers apart and feels them stick slightly as they peel away, bloody. she remembers how it felt to have fire in her, the willingness to blaze through anything and anyone to get what she wanted. Would she have killed, uninterrupted by chance? It does her no good to think about it, to try to answer a question that could have only been resolved a hundred years ago, in another life. But thinking is what she does now, the hallmark of someone who is cautious and dependable.

_You're our rock._

Wendy cursed her the moment she said it. She's learned how easily a curse can be invoked. Magic can effortlessly crumble a rock to dust. And Ingrid does more crumbling than anything else these days. Every night becomes less sleep, more blackout. The lost time leaves yawning holes in her memory.  In the morning, she doesn't recall what it was like to feel the cool grass against her bare feet. It's a mystery how her cardigan got torn, and how her dress became streaked with mud. She feels like she is a researcher again, assembling a story, piece by piece. Except this time, she has no idea what the resulting puzzle is supposed to look like. She runs her fingers through her hair and they snag on a twig. She begins noticing phantom bruises, then scrapes, then an aching between her legs. The fear returns, that she is not a rock, not a leaf but a storm, a flood, a forest fire. Ingrid is becoming a destructive force, just like her last lives, just like she will in every version of her that wields magic.

Her timidness is gone, eroded away by time or by circumstance. Instead she feels the fire again, inexplicably rekindled from the ashes of unyielding misfortune. She doesn't know how or why. There are some answers even an excellent researcher can't piece together.

All Ingrid knows is that she is no longer anyones rock, and she hates that she is so relieved.


End file.
